Dudley's Worst Memory
by dogstar-ebony
Summary: In the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter is attacked by Dementors, but he is not the only person targeted. His cousin is too, except that we never quite hear what exactly he was forced to recall. Perhaps this is it. Oneshot. RR


**Dudley's Worst Memory**

'Hey, Big D!' The voice comes from the shadows and he turns, a grin half formed on his face but the sight that greets him instead causes it to slide from his face.

"Oh." He says, taking in the thin form before him, the loose folds of cloth that hang around his cousin's skinny frame. "It's you."

"How long have you been 'Big D' then?" he asks, and Dudley tells him to shut up, not desiring a conversation with him. Harry is undeterred.

"Cool name," he says, and his face is split by his grin as he falls into step beside his cousin. "But you'll always be 'Ickle Diddykins' to me."

Dudley doesn't want to lose his temper; normally he goes out of his way to avoid his cousin so that it doesn't present itself. He can't help it this time. "I said SHUT IT!" he growls, meaty fists clenched into fists.

"Don't the boys know that's what your mum calls you?" Harry is in front of him now, walking backwards so that he can face him and his voice is full of mock surprise, quivering with barely suppressed joy.

"Shut your face."

"You don't tell _her_ to shut her face," Harry singsongs, and Dudley's fists begin to shake slightly from the effort of not slamming them into his stupid smiling face. "What about 'Popkin' and 'Dinky Diddydums', can I use them then?"

Dudley is silent. Perhaps if he does not reply, Harry will leave him alone. He will never admit it but he is frightened of his cousin. Harry has never stood up to him before, not properly, and Dudley doesn't know why he is doing so now – the only explanation he can come up with is that Harry is not afraid of him anymore.

Unfazed by Dudley's attempt at diplomacy, Harry changes tact. "So who've you been beating up tonight?" he asks, almost conversationally, and his grin fades a little. "Another ten-year-old? I know you did Mark Evans two nights ago - "

"He was asking for it," Dudley snarls, a warning.

"Oh yeah?"

"He cheeked me."

Harry raises his eyebrows in mock seriousness; they disappear beneath the wiry tangles of his hair. "Yeah? Did he say you look like a pig that's been taught to walk on its hind legs? 'Cause that's not cheek, Dud, that's true."

The effort not to hit Harry is overwhelming, but Harry's use of the word 'pig' has reminded him of his last brush with the _disease_ and he dances nervously on the spot. Harry seems fearless tonight, unusually so, and Dudley wishes he would take his hands out of his pockets so that he could see them.

"Think you're a big man carrying that thing, don't you?" he says as they walk.

"What thing?"

"That – that thing you are hiding." He won't look at Harry but stares obstinately ahead. If he does not see it and he does not name it then it does not exist and it can't hurt him.

Harry grins and pulls it from his pocket. "Not as stupid as you look, are you, Dud? But I s'pose, if you were, you wouldn't be able to walk and talk at the same time."

Oh, Dudley wants to hit him, so very much. But he doesn't dare. He sneaks a wary glance at it and says, in a tone more confident than he truly feels, "You're not allowed. You'd get expelled from that freak school you go to."

Harry chuckles softly. "How d'you know they've not changed the rules, Big D?" he says, and Dudley feels his face blanch and is thankful for the cover of night.

"They haven't," he says, and when Harry laughs at him he finally snaps. "You haven't got the guts to take me on without that thing, have you?"

Harry's response comes before Dudley has even finished his sentence. "Whereas you need four mates behind you to beat up a ten year old."

Harry is going too far and Dudley doesn't like it. His fists are clenched so tightly he can feel them paling, the blood pulsing from them and coursing to his face in his anger, and he finally plays his trump card. The satisfaction of seeing his cousin's face fall is delicious.

"'Don't kill Cedric!' he mocks, his voice shrill and harsh against the still black of night. "Who's Cedric – your boyfriend?"

Harry freezes. He doesn't realise but the hairs along his thin arms are all raised, though there is not a breath of wind out and it is a balmy, sultry evening. "I – you're lying," he says simply, and he won't meet Dudley's gaze.

"'Dad! Help me, Dad! He's going to kill me!'" Dudley continues, his voice catching on the laughter that threatens to overwhelm him in his triumph. His euphoria is short-lived, however; cold brick presses against his back, even through the thick swathes of his clothing, and his pulse races to the beat of his terror, his face bathed in sweat that has nothing to do with heat, his eyes two petrified pools of black in the darkness as he stares at the thin strip of wood pointed directly at his heart.

"Don't ever talk about that again," Harry snarls, and his face is murderous. Half bathed in shadow, Dudley can see the whites of his eyes, shot with red and staring into his own with a venom he has never experienced before. Harry's voice is slow and controlled but the fury threaded through it makes it quiver and his teeth look horribly white in the moonlight. "D'you understand me?" he whispers, dangerously quiet.

"Point that thing somewhere else!" Dudley manages, but Harry's anger overwhelms Dudley's fear and he hisses, "I said, _do you understand me?"_

"_Point it somewhere else!"_ Dudley's voice has risen to a shriek, his eyes bulging with terror.

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?" Harry bellows, his face scarlet, and Dudley begins to shout back at him but the words constrict in his throat, bunched beneath his uvula, and he cannot force them out. He makes odd, shuddering gasps and retches but nothing comes up. Suddenly he feels cold, so cold, and he can't see anything at all. The grim silence of the night is absolute, and everything is dark – Harry is gone, taking with him the stars, the moon, the streetlamps.

"W-what are you d-doing?" he whimpers, knowing this is a result of Harry's _disease_. "St-stop it!"

"I'm not doing anything! Shut up and don't move!"

"I c-can't see!" Dudley cries, his voice catching in his throat as the words are forced up. "I've g-gone blind!"

But Harry is not listening; Harry seems not to care, and Dudley cannot see anything, he can't tell if his eyes are open or closed and he stumbles blindly around in the darkness, groping desperately. He is shivering, he can feel the fog of his breath even though he cannot see it cob-webbing the air around him, and Harry won't stop it, Harry won't help him even though it's his entire fault, he just keeps telling him to shut up.

He lunges wildly at Harry and the thwack of his fist on cold flesh is like wet clay; he hears shuffled footsteps and guesses correctly that he has sent Harry flying, and he is glad, pleased that both of them are now fools stumbling clumsily in the darkness. Dudley seizes the opportunity to run from Harry, believing that escaping him will somehow break the spell, restore his sight, and he blunders blindly on.

He has barely taken twelve steps when the voices appear, and at first he careers wildly around, searching for the source. He can't see anything but he can identify each of the voices as they speak, strings of syllables that run together like beads, and they repeat themselves over and over and he can see vague images, fogged figures from his past -

_- …Here you go, Dudley_, _latest craze in Japan, these robots, cost me a fortune…and you, boy, take these dog biscuits, and go make the tea, move it! _and he can hear the tears from the kitchen, the quiet dry sobs though his cousin fights to stifle them and his own laughter as he plays with his present, indifferent -

he twists his head this way and that, trying to rid himself of the misted images, but they won't stop coming, the voices growing steadily louder and stronger in his head –

_Ow, please – stop it – take my dinner money – no - ow – no, please – PLEASE!_...and then there is the cold clear laughter, the calls of _Nice one, D! Hit him again! _and the whimpers start once more, more feeble now and the laughter overwhelms it –

he is colder than he has ever been and he collapses to the floor beneath the growing weight of the voices that assail his mind, his arms clamped over his ears to try to drown the cacophony of memories and he has never felt such a hollow in the curve where his heart should be, as though the flesh has been scooped away, leaving him exposed and barren –

the cold laughter is brittle, barbed and all directed at the thin boy who stands alone in the playground, shunned in his baggy clothing – he hears his own voice amongst the crowd, loudest of all, crowing insults at him, laughing the hardest when he falls –

he feels as though he is drowning – he cannot draw breath, but what does that matter when even if he does he will only be a shell, devoid of emotion, unable to feel, stripped of all joy – his hands are being pulled apart, he tries to resist but it is futile and he simply yields to the pressure, his hands prised slowly from his face, his head tilting inexplicably up, and the stench of rotting flesh, of death in his nostrils, so that he wants to claw at his face simply to be rid of it –

And then there is a whoosh of sudden noise, and he can breath once more, the voices dissipate, fading into a feeble echo of the memories he has recalled and it is all he can do to curl foetal upon the filthy floor, swallowing the dry sobs that tear at his throat. The lights have returned but his eyes are tightly closed, retreating within himself, and he does not move until he feels his cousin's hands close around his arms. Only then does he open his eyes, sagging gratefully against him and vowing to destroy the voice once and for all.

He knows he will never speak of the true extent of tonight's events. He hopes he will never have reason to.

**Author's note**

**I decided to write this because it's never revealed (as far as I'm aware, that is) what exactly the memory which the Dementors forced Dudley to recall in **_**Order of the Phoenix**_**, and this is my idea of what it might have been. I based this on the last appearance of the Dursleys in **_**Deathly Hallows**_**, when Dudley reveals that he actually respects Harry rather than hating him, so I decided that, being a bully, Dudley's worst memories are probably guilty ones. Some lines are stolen directly from OOTP, because this needs to be as canonical as possible.**


End file.
